“My son is brought up in the country, sire.”
“Nay, fie!” said Charles. “Is not that even what we would reproach you with? So fair a stripling should never grow a mere rustic. We’ll have him about us,” insisted the King.
Again there was that moment’s silence. Jeanne looked up from the picture at which she had been absently gazing. This son of Rockhurst interested her not at all; not had he been twice as handsome as the fair, spirited face, with its odd resemblance of features and its odder dissimilitude of expression to her own brother. She felt humiliated to have played so foolish a part of jealousy, and more than ever baffled by the strange personality of the man she had elected to love.
Rockhurst took back the locket, gazed at it again, closed it, and replaced it on its chain.
“Will your Majesty forgive me,” said he, at length, “nor deem me ungrateful if, in spite of your condescension, I yet hold that my son is best in the country?”
“We would at least hear your reason,” said Charles, with some weariness.
“In the country, your Majesty,” replied Rockhurst, then, “my lad will continue to revere his father, to honour womanhood, to live wholesomely … and think purely.”
Charles’s swarthy cheek became suddenly impurpled under a pulse of anger.
“And at our Court can your paragon practise none of these virtues?”
Rockhurst turned his glance deliberately upon the Vidame de Joncelles, who stood behind the King, his handsome chin uptilted, his eyes insolently ready to return the constable’s gaze; then he swept a look upon Jeanne de Mantes. That look said more eloquently than words the thought that was in the father’s brain. Then, at last, he spoke:—